By studying the wood-cutting behaviour of ancient beavers that once roamed the Canadian high Arctic, an international team of scientists has discovered that tree predation – feeding on trees and harvesting wood – evolved in these now-extinct rodents long before...
Fred Longstaffe
Dinosaur tooth chemistry provides new understanding of ancient ecosystems
An international team of scientists, including Fred Longstaffe from Western University, has revealed new insights into the inner workings of ancient dinosaur communities. Seventy-five-million years ago, North America was divided into western and eastern landmasses by...
Giant beavers didn’t eat wood and that’s likely why they didn’t survive the last Ice Age
North American beavers, which weigh between 25 to 75 pounds as adults, are the largest rodents living in Canada. That’s today. Go back 10,000 years to the last Ice Age and giant beavers – roughly three times larger than the modern North American beaver – walked the...
Western University scientists solve mammoth-sized ‘conundrum’
Understanding the interactions between prehistoric animals and their environment is critical to comprehending global issues like climate change and resource consumption for scientists investigating the Earth today.